The Commoner Goes for A Bike Ride

I'm a pretty lucky commoner because in my commoner job of teaching I'm often shown great signs of appreciation.  I've been pretty lucky in my career to have some great parents and students so I've seen some big and 'uncommon' gifts in my day.

This year was a first of it's kind.  A pass for 10 free Spin Classes.  This mom remembered from my resume that in another life I had been a competitive cyclist.   She thought this gift would be perfect and you know what ? She was right.

By now you know that I'm pretty hard on this town but every once in a while (like the movie theater) I find something great and pretty exceptional and I think this place qualifies as such.

I put off using this gift until finally the gifter kind of dragged me there. She called ahead and my name was on 'the list'.  Very PDiddy for sure.  So Rob scaduffled through his vast collection of riding paraphernalia and found me riding shoes and shorts.  

I had no idea this place was in the KFC parking lot.  Who Knew? Who goes there? What else is there?    I avoid that chicken smell like the plague-but Siri knew where it was and I pulled up and marched right in.

I was greeted by this perky, very skinny, blond woman who knew who I was, didn't need to see my gift card, had me all registered and greeted me with a great big hug.  Not a greeting a commoner is used to by any means.

We spent some time adjusting my bike-and showing me some basics.  Luckily there were other beginners that day, lucky I run or I would have died because I almost did. This was really hard.   As we got closer to start time the room started to fill with lots of people who were regulars.  Now I've told you how competitive I am  and beginner or not I was going to keep up.  My fancy bike shoes didn't fit the cleats and thus I had to ride with sneakers but that's okay I hate those new fangled cleats I would have been stuck there for days.


So Spin class goes something like this.  You look at a screen showing beautiful scenery which in real life I would no way ride my bike on because it looked really hard.  There's some kind of euro-techo music playing in the background-I think because I couldn't really tell -my ears had that thumping sound your blood makes before you are about to die so I couldn't really hear it-and you have the skinny super nice instructor asking you your heart rate-which I couldn't tell her because I didn't have a heart monitor.


If I had that heart monitor I would have been able to give a number when she asked.  I would say things like 80, or 90, or 70.  It wasn't until the second time I went that I realized that wasn't their beats per minute but percentage.  I was really impressed for a few minutes that they all had the same heart rate but I was wrong about that.

The instructor was so nice that she insisted on saying my name correctly. She does all this talking mind you while riding along with us-so that's impressive.  Every few minutes she would take a heart rate count and call each person by name.  She was really hung up on saying my name right and I kept saying-don't worry I don't care-it's alright-that's okay.  But she was determined when someone reminded her it rhymes with Perez.  No laying low for this commoner-kudos to the determined instructor.   


I have to tell you I gave up saying on people saying my name correctly by the time I was 8.  If I had been smart, when I left NY I would have adopted a nickname like Tracy or Terry, but no I didn't do that and hence until the next relocation I'll be explaining it to everyone I meet.  Blue Ivy you don't know how lucky you are to have a nice normal name


Looking at that screen made me really tired.  I was thinking I can't get up those hills, but I didn't have to because I was on my bike right there in a store front in Hollister.  I just had to twist a knob and I was peddling away.


Spin class was fun-it's good exercise and the instructor Carolyn made it not such a bad thing.  I'm going to ride this beginner thing a little while longer because it means she takes it easier on me.  I don't have to ride quite so hard on those hills.  


I wonder why I didn't think of this idea from all those years of indoor training on cold freezing Long Island?  Why -because Commoners wouldn't be commoners if they had ideas like this.  The only thing they didn't think of was somebody I could ride behind and wheel suck.  Hey ....hmm